Dream World

"Dream World" by R. A. Lafferty is a science fiction story from the early 1960s about a disturbing shared dream. Bascomb Swicegood is at the heart of the story when he discovers he and a stranger, Teresa Ananias, are having the same frightening nightmare. It turns out many others are, too, and soon a large number of people are having the same awful visions. As reports of grotesque images and bizarre sensations spread, terror grips society, blurring the line between what's real and what's not. A leading voice calls for a critical decision about which world to accept as true, eventually prompting a collective shift back to a plain, ordinary existence. The chilling shared nightmare slowly disappears, leaving just faded memories of horror for the characters to grapple with in their now-normal lives.